German minister backs fast track to federal Europe

THE German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave his full backing yesterday to French proposals for a "pioneer group" of European Union states, paving the way towards closer integration.

"You can't tie progress in the Union to the slowest ship in the convoy," Mr Fischer said of the move, which would leave half-hearted members on the sidelines.

"The best solution is for all 15 states to do their historical homework and rise to the challenge together. But if they can't, countries that want to proceed will march on," he told the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee in a debate designed to flesh out the landmark speech on the EU's future that he gave in May.

He said the euro was created to serve as a catalyst for federal integration and inevitably involved a major sacrifice of national sovereignty. He said: "Let us be clear - the 11 countries in the euro have already given up part of their sovereignty. They have transferred it to the EU. Adopting the euro was a step towards a certain objective. We try to avoid the word federation, but how else can it be described? It is a democratic federation. We have a federation already."

The official position of the British Government is that membership of the euro would be a purely economic decision, without constitutional implications. Mr Fischer, said the 1991 Maastricht treaty which created the single currency was a "quantum leap" towards federalism. It had created a "federal bank" based in Frankfurt and imposed an inexorable "federal logic" on those participating in economic and monetary union.

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He argued that the 11 countries in the euro area - soon to be 12 with the admission of Greece next year - formed the obvious core of the new pioneer group. Britain has fought to prevent the euro 11 becoming a union within the Union, proposing instead an alternative vision of a flexible EU where groupings of states get together in certain areas, with Britain playing a leading role in defence and security.

Mr Fischer, a German Green, dismissed this idea, sketching a vision of a "hard core" moving together in every area of policy. He repeated his call in May for a European constitution, an elected commission president and the creation of a bicameral parliament with full legislative powers. He suggested an upper chamber, or European senate, comprised of national MPs, with a mandate to safeguard cultures and traditions.

These long-term goals are not on the menu for this year's inter-governmental conference, aimed at redesigning the EU's institutions so that they can cope with an enlarged union of 27 or 30 members. But Mr Fischer said they should be added to the EU's agenda in 2002.